Rebel PDVSA leaders to start international business corporation with Spanish backing

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic news Posted: Friday, May 23, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Former Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) executives and Unapetrol white collar association leaders, Horacio Medina and Edgar Quijano are still in Spain lobbying Spanish political parties and some Spanish trade union centrals to get support for their cause in the upcoming International Labor Organization (ILO) general assembly in Geneva. 

Medina says Unapetrol wants to intervene at the ILO's Trade Union Freedom Committee meeting scheduled for May 28 and during the general assembly scheduled for June 3-19 to lodge a complaint against the Venezuelan government for alleged persecution of trade union leaders. 

"We will ask the ILO to send a research and monitoring team to Venezuela to show how PDVSA is violating workers' rights." 

However, Unapetrol will have to explain to traditional trade union delegates at the ILO why it took them so long to form a white collar union in PDVSA in the first place and demonstrate their apolitical character. 

Critics point out that rebel executives & managers decided to form a union as a political tool before April 11, 2002 to avoid being dismissed by President Hugo Chavez Frias.

Blue collar oil sector workers are members of the Oil Workers' Federation (Fedepetrol) of which Venezuelan Confederation of Trade Unions president, Carlos Ortega was the boss for years. It has now been learned that former executives and managers are also in Spain proposing to set up a business corporation to seek employment denied them in Venezuela. 

Medina says the group has made contacts in Spain, especially among white collar trade union leaders and there are excellent openings for a new corporation ... "the idea is to provide support services in different areas, including tourism, finances and international law, as well as crude oil." 

A Gente de Petroleo spokesperson in Venezuela comments that transnational companies operating in the Orinoco Belt have been advised not to take on any employees that downed tools to take part in the national stoppage. "We are talking about 300 executives on management level dismissed at PDVSA installations in Puerto La Cruz, Anaco and Maturin." Conoco, Phillips, Mobil, Total and EcoFuel have not responded to the charges.